Orphans are a common trope in children’s literature. I’m sure many people have researched and written on this topic, so I won’t do that here. But I will say that Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell with illustrations by Terry Fan (Simon & Schuster, $16.99, out today), delightfully plays with and challenges all the conventions of books about orphans. It is wonderfully mystical, and laugh out loud funny. Charles Maxim finds Sophie floating in a cello case in the English Channel after a shipwreck. According to the pin on her front, reading 1! it is probably Sophie’s first birthday. Charles, a scholar, takes her in and plans to care for her, despite the consternation of one Miss Eliot from the National Childcare Agency:

‘But it’s a child! You’re a man!’
‘Your powers of observation are formidable,’ said Charles. ‘You are a credit to your optician.’
‘But what are you going to do with her?’
Charles looked bewildered. ‘I am going to love her. That should be enough, if the poetry I’ve read is anything to go by.’

So Sophie isn’t alone; Charles does love her, and despite her rather unconventional upbringing and the fact that Charles allows her to wear trousers (!), she is happy. They are happy. Until Sophie turns 12 and the National Childcare Agency decides that Charles is an unfit guardian for a young woman. Sophie, who has hair the color of lightening, and loves to play the cello, has memories of her mother aboard that ship. She also finds an address for a music shop in Paris in the cello case that Charles finds her in. The two of them spirit away to Paris to look for her mother. There Sophie discovers a world of urchins — not street urchins, but rooftop urchins. With a little friendship, music, and just a touch of magic, Sophie might find exactly what she is looking for on the rooftops of Paris.

Did you have a chance to read Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys? If not, please do so immediately. That way you can then enjoy the second installment: The Dream Thieves (Scholastic, $18.99, out today). The Dream Thieves is written like a dream. I found myself moving out of this state of unearthliness, trying to figure out what what was real and what wasn’t. In the context of the book, magic exists. And the characters and the setting are so realistic, I become convinced that their reality is my reality and that magic must exist in this world, too. The Dream Thieves is slightly darker than The Raven Boys, but darker in a way that is entirely appropriate. Even happy dreams are bizarre and twisted. Dreams turn you up-side-down and in-side-out. They mess with you in delightfully terrifying ways. How many times have you woken up with the thought, ‘thank god, it was just a dream’, but then later you can’t remember — was it a dream or wasn’t it? Stiefvater’s second volume of the Raven Cycle brings up all of these confusing emotions. And it is brilliant. Like dreams, I can’t quite explain the book either. I know that if I start to describe it, that the description won’t do the book justice. Or I’ll get caught up trying to clarify a point that isn’t really important. I’ll just say that this book focuses more on Ronan and Adam. Like dreams, it all makes sense when you’re reading the book. But yes, it is absolutely vital that you read The Raven Boys first. In fact, I wish I had read it again right before I read the second book. I’m looking forward to when all the volumes are out and I can read them all in one go.

On a car trip to a workshop in April, I got into a conversation with another bookseller about how great Rainbow Rowell’s book Eleanor & Park is. I must have mentioned several times how much I enjoyed writing the review for that book. At that same workshop another bookseller was talking about reading Rowell’s new book, Fangirl (St. Martin’s, $18.99, out today). What?!?! A new book by Rowell? Why did I not know about this? Where’s my copy? Well I went to request a digital reading copy (booksellers can do that and it’s awesome). It wasn’t available. I logged in on our store owner’s account and it wasn’t available to her either. I emailed our rep. She put in a request. It didn’t go through. I emailed again. We spoke on the phone. I check both my and the store owner’s accounts daily. Nothing. Then the ARC arrived in the mail. I almost had to throw down with a co-worker for right to first read. Lucky for me, my name was on the package. I don’t know that I’ve ever worked so hard to get an ARC before. And it was totally worth it. In a lot of ways, Eleanor & Park is better. There is something about that book that just works. The almost glacial evolution of their relationship is bizarrely satisfying. Fangirl also contains a slow moving relationship, but this book is more about Cath and saying that Eleanor & Park is better in no way reflects on how interesting Fangirl really is.

Cath is a first year at university. She’s unhappy with the direction her life is taking, especially since a lot of those directions are outside of her control. She doesn’t like not living with her twin sister. She doesn’t like that her dad is living alone. She doesn’t like that she feels forced to expand her horizons and meet new people. What Cath really wants to do is write fan fiction shipping Simon Snow and Baz from her (and everyone else’s) favorite Simon Snow series. And she’s good at it. She has thousands of followers. Her fiction has spawned crafts on Etsy. She’s been noted as one of THE fan fiction writers to read. Simon Snow is an homage to Harry Potter with a little Twilight thrown in, and Rowell really excels at penetrating important and engaging concepts within fandom: plagiarism, ownership, the god-like act of writing, sub-culture, finding your own writing voice, and even the juxtaposition between living online and living real life. Are they your friends, if you’ve never met them? Fangirl is a fantastically fun book and the layers of fiction writing that exist in this novel are impressive. Intertextual scholars are going to have a field day with this one. As for me, I’ll be watching for Rowell’s next book.

We look back and identify ground breaking books: Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are, Snowy Day. Do we know they are groundbreaking when they first come out? In some ways, yes. The immediate audience was aware that these books did something different; they changed something in publishing. To me, David Levithan’s newest book, Two Boys Kissing (Knopf, $18.99, out today),feels groundbreaking. The book is about two boys kissing. The title is Two Boys Kissing, and even the cover image shows two boys kissing. This book does not blink. It does not compromise. Don’t like it? Avert your eyes, because this book is. And it’s phenomenal. Like the books listed above, Two Boys Kissing is groundbreaking not because it has an agenda. Not because it’s trying to prove something or change anything. But because it is so well written and is an amazing story. Inspired by true events, the story centers on two boys who are trying to set a new record for the longest kiss — upwards of 32 hours. But there are several other stories woven throughout and they all deal with boys at various stages of their relationships. The novel is narrated by a Greek chorus of gay men who died from AIDS in the 1980s and this is where things really start to get interesting.

The boys are blissfully unaware of this chorus in the same way that gay kids today are often unaware of the struggles of previous generations. At the risk of saying “kids today!”, that’s exactly what’s happening here, but it is entirely appropriate. Kids, all kids, don’t always know the past. Why should they? They’re kids. As frustrating as it might be for the chorus to see that they boys don’t really know their stories, that is the way it works. Each generation fights to make things better for the next one and that next generation reaps the benefit without ever knowing there was a fight.

As for the chorus, their nostalgia for their own lost youths, their admiration for the freedom within the gay community today, and their resentment that they never had the chance to experience that freedom is heartbreaking. Levithan elicits empathy and love from the reader for both generations.

As I’ve said before, he is a masterful writer. This book, like his others, is differently amazing. I finally had the chance to meet him for about 45 seconds and was able to say the one thing that I’ve always wanted to tell him, “I wish your books had been around when I was a teenager.”

After hearing all the Rep Picks for great upcoming books back in February 2013, one title went to the top of my list to read: If You Could Be Mine, by Sara Farizan (Algonquin Young Readers, $16.99, out today). Sahar and her best-friend Nasrin, live in Iran. They have been friends since childhood and Sahar has been in love ever since, at six, Nasrin pulled her hair and said. “Sahar, you will play with me because you belong to me. Only me”. Innocently telling her mother that she would like to marry Nasrin, Sahar learns that such a desire is haraam, a sin. The two girls, now seventeen, keep their relationship a secret. When Nasrin’s parents arrange for her marriage, Sahar is distraught. She begins to look for ways to keep the two of them together. In Iran, homosexuality may be a crime — punishable by death — but being born into the wrong body is regarded as nature’s mistake, a disease that can be cured by corrective surgery, which is sanctioned by the state. As Sahar investigates this option, she struggles with understanding her love for Nasrin and societal definitions of sexuality. Caring only about staying with Nasrin, Sahar is forced to confront the very clear distinction between being a lesbian and being transgender.

The story is infused with Iranian words and customs that will be of interest to readers who enjoy learning about other cultures. It also raises some very challenging questions about sexuality and categorization. But overall, it is a well-written and universal story about a girl growing up and trying to find herself. It’s a story about love and the things we’ll do to hold onto to it and a story about that first discovery when you start to see the world outside of your childhood. If You Could Be Mine is Sara Farizan’s first novel and it is bold. I look forward to seeing more from her in the future.

Holly Black’s Doll Bones (Margaret K. McElderry, $16.99) and Jerry Spinelli’s Hokey Pokey (Knopf Books for Young Readers, $15.99) both deal with the transition from childhood to adulthood, but are very different in their approach to the process. Hokey Pokey imagines an almost idealized world of childhood, where the rules are a little less formalized that the wild frontier. Kids rein bikes like horses; they move in packs, and there is a clear distinction between boys and girls. This world is filled with candy, games, and not a little recklessness. It doesn’t quite fit with my own memories of childhood and I do wonder how kids under 12 will respond to it. Do they recognize their own world in this book? Is it only possible to see childhood, once you’re looking back? The biggest problem I had, though, was the insinuation that the the border between childhood and adulthood was both abrupt and definitive. Once you leave Hokey Pokey, or ‘grow up’, there is no going back. One day you’re a kid. The next day you’re an adult, which doesn’t seem very realistic to me. I don’t know any kids who make the transition easily and singularly. I certainly didn’t.

Alternatively, Doll Bones also narrates the transition from childhood to adulthood, but despite the fantastic elements this book feels more realistic. First, the transition isn’t so abrupt, but rather happens over a journey. Also, there is a significant internal conflict about the change for each character, that varies from character to character. Zach’s dilemmas are different than Alice’s, who again is struggling with different things than Poppy. Finally, by the end of the book, although Zach, Poppy, and Alice have grown up, there is a clear sense that they each have more growing up to do and that on occasion, they might even ‘relapse’ and not grow up at all. Doll Bones is described as “spooky” and “scary”, which I didn’t find when reading it. I liked the ambiguity, even at the end (and I don’t think this is a spoiler) about whether the game was a game or the game was real. Because games are always real. And reality is a game. And I see no reason to make a distinction. Is Doll Bones a ghost story or a growing up story? Well, yes. Also, Black demonstrates that gender is just as fluid as ‘growing up’. Zach enjoys playing imagination games with dolls in the afternoon with Poppy and Alice. He also likes playing basketball. He doesn’t switch from boy to girl. He’s a boy who likes a variety of things. He doesn’t broadcast his afternoon games — he knows that some of the other boys wouldn’t approve — but he doesn’t feel the need to stop either. Doll Bones is ultimately about the between spaces. Maybe it is a ghost story after all.

Jenny Lee puts a canine spin on the value of friendship — or finding your pack — in Elvis and the Underdogs (Balzer + Bray, $16.99). Sure Benji has friends: the doctors and nurses at the hospital where he spends most of his time, the librarian, since he eats alone in the library when he is at school, and his mom, who fiercely watches over him. However, when he has a seizure and his doctor tells him he either has to wear an extraordinarily ugly helmet to school or get a therapy dog, Benji opts for the dog. Upon arrival, the dog, Parker Elvis Pembroke IV, emphatically informs Benji that he was meant to be the President’s dog and there has clearly been a mix-up. Benji can understand Elvis — everyone else hears barking or growling — and Elvis is worth listening to: “Benjamin. I’m not going to eat in the library. Maybe you can eat neatly enough to be allowed to do so, but I cannot. I’m a dog. I eat off the floor, when I think about food, I produce a large quantity of saliva. It’s a physiological response that is Pavlovian and is a long story that I can’t get into right now, especially when I’m hungry”. Elvis is a therapy dog with the personality of Frazier Crane. He’s serious about his duty to protect Benji, but Elvis also knows a little something about the importance of having a pack and he’s determined to help Benji create his own.

Having lived abroad, I get so tchetchy about books (and movies) about people who go abroad and suddenly everything is different and life is amazing. I sound bitter, I know. But living abroad isn’t magical. You still have to go to the grocery store. I don’t think you find yourself abroad; I think that when you step away from everything and everyone that you know, suddenly you are forced to see yourself and depend on yourself in a way that you never have before. And you realize that the world around you might be different, but you’re still you. This isn’t a good thing or a bad thing, it just is. I think traveling can change your perspective. It can open you up to amazing things. It can force you to look closely at your own culture. It can introduce you to new people. It can illuminate trends and patterns. It can push you outside your comfort zone. It can make you marvel at how big the world is, while you simultaneously start to appreciate how small it is. I love traveling. I love moving around. I love discovering things and places that I didn’t even know existed. But one of the things I’ve noticed, is that I’m always still me. I think that’s one of the reasons, I appreciated Maureen Johnson’s 13 Little Blue Envelopes (HarperTeen, $8.99). Ginny Blackstone’s aunt sends her on a trip. Ginny has to follow the directions left to her, one envelope at a time. Ginny has adventures across Europe. She meets interesting people. And yes there is a bit of romance. But she doesn’t suddenly become a different person. There is a lot of space in this book. A lot of silence. It took me a while to figure out that Ginny doesn’t say very much. She seems to be soaking in the views around her. Watching more than participating. I really appreciated that. I liked that she goes on a grand adventure, but fundamentally stays the same person all the way through. It’s the steadiness in this book, as opposed to all the books about Amazing Things That Happen When You Leave The Country, that make 13 Little Blue Envelopes stand out.

On that note, I’m heading to Scotland for a few days. More posts to follow, because there are some amazing new books out. I’ve been remiss lately and look forward to catching up.

I’m writing this post on February 5, 2013 because I am so excited about recommending this book that I can’t wait for it to come out in June. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, by Chris Grabenstein (Random House, $16.99) is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for bibliophiles, mixed with The Westing Game. It’s an ode to children’s literature. A love letter to everything we appreciate about good books. This book is a must-read for anyone who likes to read and has read a lot, if nothing else than for the enjoyment of the prolific and well-placed references to the best of children’s literature.

Eccentric Mr. Lemoncello rebuilds the public library and invites twelve 12 year olds to participate in a lock-in. The town has not had a library for twelve years and he wants to share his love of reading with a group of kids who have grown up without the benefit of a public library. The lock-in morphs into a game. The first player who discovers how to get *out* of the library will win the grand prize. So you can see why bibliophiles will love this book; it is one long celebration of books and reading. What I loved most, however, is that the game and the clues were revealed in such a way that the reader could play along with the characters. I didn’t have to passively watch the characters solve riddles (one of the things that really frustrated me about The Mysterious Benedict Society), but instead I could participate and try to figure out the puzzle for myself along the way. Almost everything in the book is a clue of some sort, so I found myself reading very carefully, trying to remember all the details. Clues are repeated throughout the book, however, which was useful because I didn’t have to write it all out, although I did consider doing so! Read, play, and enjoy! And if anyone figures out the final puzzle, please let me know! I don’t know if the ARC I read just didn’t have all the information or if I missed something really important!